Good Morning Sunshine
by Evil Shall Giggle
Summary: Ivanova would really rather be alone. IvanovaMarcus fluff.


"Good morning, Commander!"

Ivanova jumped as the tray clattered jarringly against the metal table, her coffee sloshing dangerously in its half-empty cup. "Marcus," she greeted him, more surprised than annoyed, and blinked to clear her sleep-fogged eyes. "You're up late."

"Oh, no," he said cheerfully, grabbing the salt and pepper shakers from the middle of the table and dumping ungodly proportions of their contents onto his food. "This is my normal time. Now you, on the other hand, are up quite extraordinarily early. I didn't have you pegged as a morning person; I'm rather surprised."

"Early?" she echoed.

"Very," he nodded enthusiastically, "it's nearly two."

She rubbed her hands over her face with a sigh. "Really?"

"Yep." He took a bite of his meal. "Couldn't sleep?"

She shook her head and tiredly waved the report she'd been reading. "Too much to do."

He plucked it out of her hand and skimmed over it, taking a sip of whatever he had in his cup. "Let's see… cargo logs from the ships that left yesterday. For this you stayed up all night?" He looked at her sceptically and set the flimsy aside, picking up instead the small datapad lying next to her elbow.

"Hey!" she exclaimed, making to snatch it back.

He leaned back in his chair to get it out of her reach and turned the display on. His mischievous grin froze and slid off his face and he returned all four legs of the chair to the ground to study the pad more closely. "Is this your mother?"

She nodded, "And my brother, when he was ten."

Marcus's eyes darted between the picture and Susan's face. "She looks like you," he commented.

"Give me that," she snapped, grabbing it out of his hands and turning the display off.

He shrugged. "She's very beautiful," he said, sincerity written all over his open face. "Where is she now?"

"She's dead," Ivanova replied shortly, piling all her scattered work together and slipping it into a folder.

Marcus's hand shot across the table and caught one of hers. She avoided his eyes, staring instead at the papers she'd been shoving out of sight with more force than necessary. "I'm sorry."

"Yeah, me too," she muttered, taking her hand back and standing. "Good night, morning, day, whatever."

"Good night," he returned, watching her stride briskly away.

She paused in the doorway and turned halfway back to him. "Marcus?" Her voice had that cadence it got from time to time, that slightly higher pitch that told him he was dealing with Susan the woman instead of Ivanova the commander. He waited for her to speak again. "Are you… are you happy here?"

Several of his usual wittily sarcastic replies came to mind, but he pushed them aside as he did his chair and took a few steps toward her, leaning against the doorframe opposite her. "Are you?"

Her face hardened for a moment and her struggle to soften it was visible briefly before she shifted her weight to one foot and made an expression that he supposed was her version of sticking out her tongue. "I asked first."

He chuckled, looking down at the floor between them, "You did indeed." Raising his eyes again, he gave the question a bit of serious thought before replying, "Happiness is relative."

"You're going to have to do better than that if you want to get an answer out of me," she told him, one eyebrow arched.

"It is!" he insisted, "I mean, look at some of those rich people back on Earth. Give one of them a fourth car and they're happy. Give a person from Down Below a roof above their head and they're happy. But it's not the same kind of happy, follow?"

"You're avoiding the question."

"Not really," he protested, "I'm just making a point. If you can't even decide what kind of happy you are, how can you tell if you're _really_ happy?"

"Marcus—" she warned.

"Right." He glanced around. In all honesty, yes, he was very happy. But if he told her that, she'd ask why, and the only truthful reason he could give she'd never accept. Might as well try away… really, what was the worst she could do? Cut him into tiny pieces and toss him out an airlock, bit by bit? "I'm happy."

"Why?" she asked, just as he'd predicted. It seemed to have slipped out before she could stop herself, and she hastily back-pedalled, "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to, I mean, it's really none of my business—"

"You," he told her, plain and simple.

She froze. "What?"

Okay, so maybe chopped up and spaced _wasn't _the worst thing that could happen to him. From the look on her face, her imagination was boundless.

"I mean, since you're so quick-witted and, er, authoritative, it's truly quite a pleasure to serve under you, and you really do make a bloody brilliant commander, probably a great captain someday too, and—"

She cut him off with a quick, impulsive peck on the cheek. Now it was his turn to gape at her in shock. "Does this mean I don't get cut into tiny pieces and thrown out an airlock?" he called tentatively after her as she casually made her retreat.

He could hear the smile in her voice as she walked away, hips swinging leisurely. "Don't bet on it."


End file.
